In setting up a storage system that uses a data protection mechanism such as RAID (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks), it is often difficult to determine accurately how much disk space to pre-allocate to a part of the storage system that uses RAID (referred to as “RAID storage”), and how much disk space to leave for another part of the storage system that does not employ RAID.
Normally, a system administrator has to guess ahead of time how much space to allocate the RAID storage. If inadequate space is pre-allocated to the RAID storage, then the RAID storage would run out of space at a later point in time during operation of the storage system. As a result, a system administrator may have to manually expand the capacity of the RAID storage. Expanding capacities of a RAID storage may involve offloading all data of the RAID storage onto an external storage system, re-partitioning the physical storage infrastructure, and then loading the data back into the new RAID storage. Such an approach can be time consuming and labor intensive.